What is Acre+Care?
Acre+Care is the Amazon Aid Foundation’s revolutionary system for direct private protection of the Amazon rainforests. For $50, you can adopt and protect an acre through our NASA geospatial mapping system.
The Amazon Aid Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and all donations are tax-deductible.

Where does your money go?
80% percent of your donation to the Amazon Aid Foundation helps fund the supervision and operation of the 100,000 acres in the Madre De Dios region– the headwaters of the Amazon. The other 20% will cover the administrative costs of keeping Acre+Care up and running.

Protecting habitat is one of the most important things you can do to save the Amazon. Your donations go into an interest-bearing fund managed by our partners on the ground at the Amazon Conservation Association. The interest is used to protect land in the Madre de Dios region. Based on the past several years of expenses related to protecting the specified lands, we have calculated that if each of the 100,000 acres were adopted at $40 per acre, the interest from those donations would be enough to manage and protect these healthy Amazonia forests. This includes the funding of park guards, government protection, concession staff, and management of the area. The other $10 covers the overhead costs of Acre+Care, including transaction fees, site development and maintenance, and educational efforts. If you’d like more information about how your donation is used, please contact us at info@amazonaid.org.

Why The Amazon?
The Amazon rainforest is home to more plants, animals and trees than any other place in the world. The Amazon also helps regulate weather systems, carries 20 percent of the planet’s fresh water, is a huge repository for foods and medicines, is one of the world's major carbon sinks, and is the home to a rich array of indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, deforestation is not only destroying habitats of many people and animals, but also contributing to climate change by releasing the carbon stored in the trees trunks, branches and roots, adding approximately 20% of all yearly carbon emissions. The extraction of natural resources, particularly gold mining, is another major cause of habitat destruction that leaves forests bare and contaminates waterways and soil, poisoning the people and animals that live in the Amazon. Some experts say that at the current rate of destruction, the Amazon could be gone in 40 years.

Why these acres?
One of the Amazon Aid Foundation’s (AAF) main goals is to maintain partnerships with local organizations that have a dedicated history of preservation in the area. For our pilot project, we are working with the Amazon Conservation Association (ACA) and its sister organization in Peru, la Asociación para la Conservación de la Cuenca Amazónica (ACCA). These organizations’ shared mission is to protect and scientifically study these rich forests.
Through conservation concessions, an innovation written into Peruvian forestry legislation in 2000, ACA has the unique opportunity to conserve large state-owned lands that would otherwise be unmanaged. A conservation concession is a long-term contractual partnership between the national government and a non-government actor, whereby the civil society actor manages state-owned lands for purposes of ecosystem and biodiversity conservation.

For over 15 years, the scientists from the Amazon Conservation Association have lived and learned about the wide variety of plants, animals and peoples that call the Amazon home. Great rivers, like the Los Amigos River, trickle down from the adjacent Andes Mountains. This area also holds the important reserve for un-contacted indigenous groups, the Territorial Reserve of Madre de Dios, and also houses trees that are still standing within 100,000 acres of old-growth Amazonian forest, plants and animals, terrestrial and aquatic habitats like palm swamps, oxbow lakes, bamboo thickets and various types of flooded and non-flooded forests. Today, our partnership with ACA-ACCA does more than just protect. Together, we aim to foster more research, education and empowerment among the Latin American people so they can benefit from this sacred area and act as long-term guardians, mentors and conservation planners in the region.

The Amazon Aid Foundation
is a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a mission to bring awareness and environmental sustainability for the Amazon rainforest through multi-media educational materials while assisting partners on the ground who provide solutions. All donations are 100% tax deductible. Visit us at www.amazonaid.org or email info@amazonaid.org for more information.